No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Dirty Bar Of Soap

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Dan, Anna, Andy and Rhys James discuss soap, style, naps and novelists. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hey everyone, welcome to the very first episode of Fish in the year 2024. This is going to be a really big year for us. We're incredibly excited. It's our 10-year anniversary, 10 years of fish this March. That's over 500 episodes, 29,000 facts. Actually, so far, 29,597 facts, to be exact. We know that because Andy keeps a spreadsheet. So thanks to everyone who's been tuning in all this time. I hope you had a great holiday break. Hope you had a great New Year's. We got a great episode for you today. James is away on holiday at the moment. So, in his place, we have another James, a Reese James. I'm sure you're all aware of Reese James. He's an amazing stand-up comedian. He's appeared on multiple TV shows and radio shows. Most predominantly,

I would say, as a regular or mock the week, where for years he was a panelist. And actually, if you go to Reese's Instagram account, which is at Reese Jamesie, so that's Reese Jameses, but with a Y at the end, you'll find the funniest Instagram account out there, in my personal opinion. reason I basically stayed on Instagram for a long time. He's uploaded all of his single one-liners that he's delivered on the show Moth the Week from over the years. And honestly, you will be in tears laughing. So get that into your life. Follow him there. And if you want more long-form stuff by him, you can go to his YouTube account where you'll find an entire radio show that's been uploaded there. And that's called research, as in Reese's name, but mixed with research. Rees search.

And to describe that show the best way would be to say it's answering all of life's big questions, but done in a sort of brass eye mold. It's incredibly funny, and you must check it out. But in the meantime, don't go anywhere because you can enjoy him here on No Such Thing as a Fish. So here we go. On with the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern.

My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Reese James. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Reese. Soap is the best way to move a building. How do we feel about that?

That was so dramatically presented. I really enjoyed it. And I actually racked my brow. I had other options. I had other options of ways to introduce that headline. I went with that basic, really simple one. But I was going to say something like, washing, removing stains, moving buildings.

Just three of the hats. soapware. That's what I was going to go over. It's the first fact, you know, keep it simple. But just I want you know, I had that in the locker. No, no, no, no, absolutely.

I think you played it right, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what's the story here then? So in Nova Scotia, at last, I always, it's very, it felt very local news, this story. So, and there was like a local news video about it, but basically a old Victorian building

that was mostly used as a hotel for about 100 years. It was going to get knocked down. Then a company bought it because they wanted to attach it to a planned apartment blocks or 30 feet away. And instead of moving it, the traditional way with rollers, they used 700 bars of ivory soap, because that's the softest soap, and therefore the slippiest.

And they did that successfully to then get it onto new foundations, and then once that is complete, they are going to move the whole thing back. What? Yeah. Why? That's the end. I don't know. They're going to move, because basically, now it's like a protected landmark,

this old building, I think. And so they were going to restore the whole thing and put it back. to where it was, which to me just suggests you wanted to move it with soap. You didn't need to move this. Yeah, if it's protected, but we've also proved beyond doubt that it's mobile. Yeah. It doesn't matter where it is as long as we're protecting it. Yeah, yeah.

Take it on the road. I found it amazing how little soap you need to move. Yes. I mean, I looked at a photo. This is a big building. 700 bars of soap is obviously lots of bars of soap, but it's not that many. Surface area-wise, it doesn't feel like that. They didn't even use 700 bars.

Oh, really? Yeah, they took some home, didn't they? I think some of the builders took, there was 20 to 40 bars left. So they used most of it. They estimated quite well. Yeah. At last. My gosh, you don't hear that a lot.

The crazy thing is this is not the first time that soap's been used to move buildings, but it's clearly an essential ingredient as part of the process of what they're doing. And it was as they were getting ready to move it, they went, we don't have any soap. So it's not even like they bought it in industrial bulk amounts. What ended up happening was the guy who was in charge of it, his wife was. Leanne had to run to 15 shops around the area and buy using $970 something bucks, the equivalent of 700. It's suddenly, when you put it like that, it suddenly sounds quite taskmaster, doesn't it?

It's like a panic there of like, oh my God. And he wasn't this guy, Sheldon Rushden, the lead builder guy, said, I think he said at first, he thought, I'll just ask my wife if we can use some of our soap from home. And there was only when she said, we're absolutely not doing that. I'm not giving up our personal supply that she offered to drive around which doesn't even think how many bars of soap are you stockpiling in your house?

Yeah, exactly. But also how precious are you about where the soap is your personal supply or not? Sorry, surely if it was like, yeah, you can use some of our old soap, but use some of the budget to get us some new soap. Surely the same thing. You're right.

Has she written diary entries on the wrapping? Yeah, it's got sentimental value, her own personal soap. I think once you're mixing work with pleasure, it's sort of, I agree with that. Yeah. And it's, we're not actually sponsored by ivory soap this week, but it is very, very soft, apparently, and that's great. And if you do use the offer code fish, you are having a 20% of the old.

You'll get nothing. You get absolutely nothing. You get a weird look. But so what the basic method you use to move the building is, so you dig under the building, don't you? And then you put steel beams under the building. Then you lift the whole thing up by one inch on hydraulic jacks. Just jack it up one inch. And you slide the soap underneath it on trays.

And then I think you lower, then you lower an inch, and it just kind of squishes the soap. But it's incredibly soapy now. Yeah. So you leave it overnight to squish the soap, right? You sit it on the soap overnight, which I feel like a building's heavy enough that you only need to sit it on the soap for 10 minutes.

These guys are experts, I know. They know what they're trying to create a sort of slip and slide aspect to it. I bet they can just push it. And it's just about the weight you push it, like, curling. And then it just doesn't land in the bit you want the building to be it eventually. I pushed it too hard, he's gone in the sea. It's a thousand that with brooms quickly. Have any of you curled?

Never. I've cured. Oh, I curl. Sorry, but I curl. I was trained by the British Olympic curling duo for the Winter Olympics just gone. Yeah. Clang? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, big time. Whose names are, and then just insert them, if you were. They were lovely. Why were you hoping to be the third member of the team? Yeah, I did a thing for Team GB's YouTube thing, I went and had to do four Winter Olympic sports because in the Summer Olympic podcast, I had said, as a joke,

I reckon I could master any Olympic sport in a day. And I was just, you know, I was being hyperbolic. And then suddenly their next series I said, go on then. And I mastered none of them in several days. One of them is curling, though, which was the easiest, but it's like insane at first because, also they're not very technical with their language, so they literally just call it grippy shoe and slippy shoe.

And you have one of each. Oh, that's like bowling. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So they gave me like this thing that goes under your shin as you slide along at first. There's basically like a little ice skate

but it just rests. I think you just have that at first and then you're supposed to just slide on your actual shin. But at first they give you that at first that's like barriers in bowling, I reckon. Or like the thing you push the ball down to make it.

I see, I said it. How did you do? Pretty badly, I think. But it was better than when I had to do speed skating and smashed open my chin on the last shot of the whole thing. Oh, wow.

That was much worse. Good ending though. They should give you a little ski for the bottom of your chin, like your knee curling for that situation. Ries coming today, dressed fully in skis by the way. Head to toe, skis for every limb. Well, the only issue with the idea with this building being the curling system is you could probably get it into place

with one big push, but then you might have a rival building behind you knock you out using the same system. You know the Titanic was put on soap? I think we've said before that the Titanic was put on soap to go down the slipway. Yeah. Like, whale blubber

and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it was tallow and oil and soap and it was 20 tons of it that was used. It was not amazing. But obviously, that's more than 700 bars,

isn't it? Yeah. But I did, so I was just reading a bit more about that. I never read this before. Workers, they would go to the slipway

afterwards and try and gather up any spare soap that was left over. Oh, to use themselves. Interesting. But it was also covered in sort of oil and talism. You could probably wash it, right?

You could probably rush away that and then you've got the soap sitting underneath. I guess so. I don't think soap gets because you can just wash off the upper layer. There is a big debate online about whether you can get soap dirty. Welcome to the show.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is the kind of controversy we try to avoid. Well, of course you can. Of course you can. I'm willing to weigh in on this debate. Of course you can get soap dirty. I believe, of course you can get soap dirty,

but it doesn't stop it cleaning you. So it doesn't matter. Interesting. If your soap's dirty, doesn't make a difference. Yeah, yeah. A level of dirty it would have to be for the dirt on it to make you dirtier. Yeah. And outweigh the cleanliness of the soap being applied to you.

It's so dirty. Yeah. At that point, right off that bar of soap. Sometimes in horrible pubs, there will be a bar of soap at the sinks. And you look at it and you think, oh, I'm actually, I'm not sure. Well, this is a thing. There was a report that was done, a sort of a research project to look into how clean actually are in bathrooms, like pubs and stuff. How clean is the soap that you're getting?

And they've worked out that some of the dispensers are left for so long where they're not maintained and they get cracks in it, that you can go to the toilet, wash your hands with the soap, and leave with dirtier hands, then you arrived with... No. Yeah, because they found 15 types of bacteria that were sitting on these dispensers that would make it onto your hand as part of the soap. Right. And they would stay...

Yeah, same pull handles in the toilet. When you think, I know what people are doing in here. I'm going to make a call on this toilet thing and say it doesn't make your hands dirtier than after you wash them because it doesn't matter if there's bacteria on the soup dispenser. So on the soup dispenser, It does matter. Well, don't even see.

But on the soap dispenser, isn't the point of soap that it gets onto your hands and then it makes the water and the dirt on your hands more slippery? And so it gets them off. And it doesn't matter if there's bacteria on the dispenser. Yes, it doesn't. The soap immediately gets all of that off. Which is why it doesn't matter if a bar of soap is dirty. No, but that's the amazing thing about soap.

And it's why it's so incredible that we, you know, as a species, discovered it millennia ago. It not only makes the dirt and stuff on your hands slippery to slide off, but it also has this structure which tears open bacteria and viruses. It's amazing. Okay, so I want to read this because I don't want to get it wrong. Each molecule of soap has a head which bonds with water and then a tail which hates water, right? And sort of is hydrophobic, you know, and tries to avoid it at all costs.

That's horrible identity crisis. I know, I know, this poor molecule. And so the tail seeks oils and fats and things. And basically, bacteria and viruses, they're surrounded by a lipid membrane, a fatty. membrane and when they touch soap the soap kind of envelops it and also the soap molecule tails which are trying to avoid water realize there is a fatty layer on that bacterium and burrow into it they sort of wedge themselves in and that rips the bacterium apart so that's the other thing that's going on as well as making things slippier yeah it's just amazing it's incredible yeah and it smells

nice and it smells nice and less we forget naturally that was the main comment of the builders after they moved that building honestly they said they went away smelling great Yeah, yeah. Do you know, though, what is better out of, and I feel like I've presented this in a really obvious way now, out of antibacterial soap and just a bar of soap? Antibacterial. Dan, you idiot. I mean, I even said it, so the answer was clear. No, there's a serious worry that people are converting to antibacterial soap a lot and hand soap. And there's a guy called Professor Lithgow, who works at Monash University in Australia.

and he says that he thinks they should all be banned antimicrobial soaps because they're not better than just a bar of soap even though we I mean we've got them all over our house now there's a COVID hangover not better than a bar of soap hand soap is where you don't use water are significantly less good because you know when you get a hand sanitizer that's a lot less good because yeah because the water doesn't you need the water to scrub away and wash off that layer

and he says that they're causing a huge amount of antibiotic resistance because we're shoving this antibacterial soap at our hands and all the bacteria is becoming kind of superbugs on our hands and he explains exactly we're all going to have just these superbugs living on us so really and this really surprised me it's not about the antimicrobial chemical properties

really as much as it is about the scrub but actually the key is as long as you scrub your hands really hard with the water it scrapes them off and with the soap and with the soap Water does all right, but soap is the thing that really. Yes, there's definitely something psychological about the smell and presentation, though, right, of how clean you feel. Because natural soaps don't feel, they obviously are better. And you could make soap out of just oil and lard, basically, can't you?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, if I'm rubbing oil on my body, I don't feel, and lard. It's lying, isn't it? It's like that, and the scrub of that is what actually makes you clean. Why am I getting so turned on about the finish, so? Well, I shouldn't be rubbing myself, but. But you need the, it has to have a scent or I won't feel.

Does it? Well also, I've not used a bar of soap for years and I find a bar of soap disgusting. How many, I always only use bars. Never a bar. Never a bar. Come on. I don't mind a bar of soap. Are you a cartoon?

Are you all cartoon? What did it? I don't use, in our house we have the, yeah, we have liquid soap as opposed to a bar of soap. But I would use it. A little pump. No, like a shower jail type situation. I'm familiar with the concept, but you should just feel very guilty because of course you are single-handedly destroying the world with all your plastic use. No palm oil, always say no palm oil please. What is the issue? Plastic?

Yeah, plastic. Is it around? Who is you saying it to? Your personal soap? I say, no palm oil please. To my bottle? Sorry, I don't make that clear. Um, is most soaps, I have, again, I actually haven't bought a bar in their ages. aren't they covered in quite a plasticy kind of wrapping? Yes, Dan. Paper?

Is it paper these days? Ah. It depends. Right, there is a spectrum. What we've seen is a spectrum is here from Anna, who uses only old-fashioned bars or soap that have to be cut from the mother block. And then wrapped in grease-proof paper. Yeah, yeah.

Up to Dan, who has like those auto dispenses at every doorway in his house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the other boring, this is such a boring thing to say. But actually, if you use bar soap, it's got a slightly lower carbon footprint in the travel emissions. Yeah, cool. Because you're not, you know, with liquid soap, you're mostly transporting the water. Yeah, but what about, okay. But what about the satisfaction of a foam burst?

You ever used a foam burst? I became briefly obsessed with foam bursts. What's a lot as a phone burst? It's just a soap that is literally designed to become extra foamy when you're lathering. And so, you know, you feel it's exciting. It's very exciting way to start or end your day. Just feels like you're not engaging with the ethical issues here, really. You're very much sent and foam based.

And I'm happy this girl record. I couldn't give a fuck about the ethical issue. I flew here. Okay, it is time for fact number two. And that is Andy. My fact is that the 19th century author Thomas Hardy had two funerals at the same time. Did you say 19th century author

so we didn't confuse him with the 21st century actor? Because he's still alive. Yeah. This is Tom Hardy. Thomas Hardy, who wrote, I'm confusing it already, Jude the Obscure, Tass of the Derbaville's, Mayor of Castorbridge. We don't need the full bibliography. About 900 poems. He was a big deal.

He was. He was mega famous, actually. And that was sort of what led to this problem. Basically, he was meant to be buried in Dorset, in his native Stinceford, with his first wife, right? And it was all ready to go. There was a space on the tombstone for him, his name to be added, you know. And then he died. and then his friends, including James Barry

of Peter Pan. Peter Pan fame and Sidney Cockrell, who slightly less well-treated by history, but I'm sure a big deal at the time. They went to his home basically on his death, and they said, we think he should be buried in Poets Corner in Westminsterrabee. He's a huge, huge deal. And they kind of bullied Thomas Hardy's second wife, Florence,

into going along with it. Right. She sort of said, oh, okay, fine. So they struck a deal whereby he, went to Poets Corner and his heart went to Stinceford and they both had a funeral at 2pm on the 16th of January 1928 I mean real Sophie's choice for his second wife sorry you're either going to be buried in Poets Corner which is not where you're supposed

to be or with your other wife yeah your previous wife and oh no we'll just take your heart to your previous wife I know it's really where's you might be where the fight that I come in in all of this you take it where are my ending up yeah yeah yeah yeah it's true And also, like, well, I think reading into it more, I think his family was there as well. So that was kind of... Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

No, non-poet's common. And so, because his wife, his first wife, they didn't particularly get on too well, like, deep into the marriage. To begin with, they did. But there was a lot of... No, it was a... There's a painful marriage according to a lot of the friends and close relatives and so on. And her, herself. And him, himself.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So why did he want to be... there? Well, the family, I guess. She just happened to be there. Right. He felt huge regret about what a dicky was to her. It was said. He treated her quite bad. She kept a book. Oh my God, it's the greatest title I've ever heard. Yeah, so he found after she died, and they did have this difficult relationship, didn't they? And she's a very interesting, weird character. But he found in the attic, after she died, a diary that she'd written basically called something

like, what I think of my husband. And just loads of bitching about him. And he did, and he'd feel so awful and he felt really guilty reading that. And I think he burned it. Immediately. Yeah. Yeah. I feel so bad.

Okay, let's just pop those in the fire. Burned it on the gaslight. I think that's every husband's nightmare. Yeah. It's not a dream for every wife, I'm going to tell you. You're not picking up a book called What I Think of My Husband and expecting a positive review, are you? He's great.

End of book. Oh, dear. Always helps. He always listens. She lived in the attic. She just moved into the attic after a while, a while after their relationship started to go really wrong. She was kind of the, she was the sane woman in the attic.

Well, I mean, sources differ on the sanity levels. And then he remarried, he married Florence, who was 39 years his junior. There was a big difference, though. The list of not even guests at the funeral of Thomas Hardy, but the pallbearers, you had just before mentioned, James Barry, J. M. Barry was one of the pallbearers.

You had George Bernard Shaw. You had the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, is one of the Paul Bearers. And then, you know, various other names that were obviously massive. Two prime ministers being Paul Berers, but one of them wasn't Prime Minister yet. That's right, leader of the opposition at the time. Ramsey MacDonald, who was then the first Labour Prime Minister. Rudyard Kipling.

And Kipling, yeah. Also the poor bearer? I guess is this that surprising? If Richard Lusman dies, I wouldn't be massively surprised if, like, Sebastian folks, Ian McEwan. Yeah, but this is the equivalent of Rishi Sunak and Kirstarmer. Yeah, I tell you what. I don't think you get a lot of volunteers to carry that coffin.

He's a big lad. Oh yeah, your poor period list would be very long, wouldn't it? Yeah. I wonder how tall Thomas Hoddy was because he had 10. Did he? Which feels like a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Normally you can fit six.

Oh, okay. Yeah, good point. You know. Very squeezed in. I know. I think he was definitely quite puny as a baby. And his mother gave birth and they went, oh, we'll set that side because it's not alive and we'll retrieve the mother.

And they put him to one side thinking that he wasn't alive. Good Lord. And then the midwife, who probably wasn't doing a job particularly well, said, after a few minutes, oh, hang on a second, this baby's life. We should keep it going. Good grave. And he was very, and for the first few weeks, everyone assumed that he would die.

And he was quite a weakling, I think, when he was younger. Are you guys, any fans of his stuff? Yeah. Yeah, I read Tesla the Dervabills at school. And it was the first, as it were, literature book that I'd write up until then, I was reading Spin Off Indiana Jones novelizations. And it blew my mind. I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. And he wrote my favorite poem, which was a darkling thrush. Amazing poem. You want to read it? Well, he considered himself a poet more than an author, didn't he? Despite these like seminal classics. He was much more successful as an author, right? That's just like, yeah.

He was extremely successful as a poet as well. And the last 30 years of his life, he only wrote poetry, didn't he? Yeah, yeah. Well, he had success, but this, to me, is like Ant and Deck considering themselves musicians. But they've been successful in the charts, but you didn't say the famous. Yeah. He had a repertoire. Yeah. musicians Ant and Deck have died is not what's going to be.

Yeah. Exactly. But this to me is just like, you know, his Twitter bio would just be one of those ones that's just like a list. Poet, author, son, father, husband twice. For anyone who's listening who's not a fan, they're basically the books are, they're amazing, but also incredibly gloomy. As in they feature all sorts of, you know, terribly unhappy people, being, you know, making poor decisions and getting on badly with each other. Although I think that he has a reputation. Far from the mud and crowd. is not a gloomy book.

Everyone always says such sad books, but yeah, don't read Jude the Obscure if you are. So, Judy the Obscure, the Guardian a few years ago, they produced this fantastic infographic on what each book contains in terms of various traumas. Right, so Jude the Obscure was, by a long shot, the winner, but it features, they just listed

like in little bullet points what it features. An unhappy relationship, a death, another unhappy relationship, another unhappy relationship, grinding poverty, suicide, murder, murder, that's one child who kills two others and then himself. Miscarriage, alcoholism, another death, and animal genitalia related injury, which I had forgotten about,

which does feature and do the obscure. Does it? What happens? Which bits that? Jude, he meets his wife Arabella when she throws a pig's pizel, a pig's penis at him. Oh.

And it wallops him on the bonts. If you, when you said animal-related genital injury, I would never have guessed that. I was going to something biting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I never would have, I never would have thought it was the animal's genital that was in.

That was causing the injury. So a different part of his body. Dismembered pig dick was not. On my bingo card for 1894. So got the train in today to King's Cross, and I had a bit of time on my hands. And I went to see something pretty incredible. The tree?

Yeah. I went to see the Hardy tree. What's that? The Hardy tree is old St. Pankras Church, which is just up the road from and Pancras Station International. And it's a church where you have a graveyard there. And when Hardy, prior to becoming a full-time writer,

I think maybe he was dabbling in writing at that point, but he was an architect beforehand. And he used to work in London. And he worked for a company which was called Blumfield. And one of the things that Blumfield needed to do was they needed to move a lot of the graves that were in the area to make room for a new rail track. It was the mainland Grand Railway.

And so they had to exhumble. and it was thousands of bodies that they had to exhume and they had all these leftover tombstones and Hardy did this thing where there's about a hundred of them of these tombstones they are all sort of layered in towards the tree and it's so hard to describe like in the concerted circles

is the tree because the tree fell down this year the tree fell down in 2022 oh how's it full I saw it years ago but it was like when I was like the roots were like growing over the tombstones it's almost like give the illusion that the tombstones was sinking because like who was starting to grow over the top of them, they were getting shorter and shorter.

Yeah, so I didn't know it fell down. So what is it? A storm took it out, but they've left, there's a big fence around it at the moment. They're working out what to do in which way to restore it. But yeah, that is a, that is literally a bit of art slash architecture by Thomas Hardy, as you say, you saw it in its full place. And God, just generally, by the way, what an extraordinary cemetery that is with such notable people. Mary Wollstonecraft is buried there, who was the mother of Mary Shelley.

And there's this story which all academics think is almost definitely. true. It's one of those ones where it's like there might be a tiny grain of untruth. It's where she used to go and sit and read her mother's books against the tombstone. And it's where her and Percy Shelley first had sex on the tombstone. That's the kind of thing they would have done. Yeah. Goths, man. I think that's fair.

I'm highly recommended though. Of course you were done. You recommend all sorts of stuff. I mean, going to visit the cemetery. Dance sex advice. podcast is, you're going to go down like a lead balloon. But also, incidentally, one of the people who were buried underneath supposedly all those tombstones is the writer who wrote The Vampire, who was part of that weekend with Mary Shelley.

Polidori. Yeah, Polidori. Yeah. Can I shatter your illusions, though, about that lovely concentric circle gravestones and tree. Tree has nothing to do with him. What? Yeah. Everyone calls it the hardy tree.

There's no evidence it was planted in his life, like, by him. when he was an architect. There's no evidence. They think it was planted about 50 years after he died. It only started being referenced in the... I don't know. He just made the circles.

He made the circles, I thought. He, all we know, I'm pretty sure, is that he was indeed employed because he was low down in the architect's firm. So the architect said, could you dig up all these bodies? So he did dig up the bodies. And he, in fact,

he remembered later in his life when they were digging up the bodies, opening one grave that had two heads and one body. And that was a fun memory for him. And he said, Some of them were just skeletons loose in the ground. Some of them, like, crumpled apart.

He was digging them up personally. He was there overseeing it, and other people under him were digging them up. Two heads, one body. Yeah. We don't know he made the stone circle. We don't know. It sounds like you just littered some gravestone somewhere. He just doesn't.

The story is losing the mud of its impact. A tree grew and turned them into a perfect circle. It's like a, generally like a natural phenomenon. Some poor person, probably a woman, came afterwards and said, hey, it would look nice if we did this. And then everyone's gone. Oh, Tom. You're such a genius.

That's classic, Tom. Yeah. How interesting. Can I give you guys a quiz? Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay, so we all know Tom Hardy, and we all know about Kiss Me Hardy. Yeah.

And we'll know about Tom Hardy, the actor, right? So which Tom Hardy, I've renamed these headlines, so they'll all say Tom Hardy, so that's not a clue, right? Which Tom Hardy are these about? Yeah. Okay. Goldfish removed from Tom Hardy Pond to protect Nutes. Which Hardy is that about? The actor.

Author. Author. author. You're both right. Sorry, Dan. It's a bit loose calling him Tom. I've changed the headlines. I've changed the headlines. So they all say Tom Hardy. So that's not to avoid being a clue. I see. Sorry. Because people only say Thomas or Tom. Yeah.

Tom Hardy fuels James Bond rumors. Well, no. Let's be it. Let's go back to when the first James Bond was written. Let's do the dates alive. Fleming was a port bearer at the author too. I'm locking that in. Okay. No, I'm so sorry, Dan. That's about the actor Tom Hardy. Damn it. Last one. Tom Hardy wins Jiu-Jitsu contest in Milton Keynes. I don't think it's any of them. That's just a different bloke.

No, it's the actor. Last year, he just turned up in Milton Keynes. The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Open Championship held at a school in Milton Keynes and kicked everyone's ass. He won. He was champion in his... Held his school, but it was adults. He was turned to turn up and go, this should be a walk in the park. He absolutely went through year eight like a dose of salts.

No, he has a blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu. and just destroyed everyone. Because it's quite intimidating if you turn up as he, Tom Hardy, you know, Babe, Mad Max. Are you allowed to just wander in? Surely you have to have entered in advance. Yeah, he did enter in advance. He registered.

Oh, he registered. He does registered like a normal person, you know. And I bet someone who worked at that school who was organising the whole thing, read it and went, it won't be that top. Yeah, yeah. He walked in like, fuck. Yeah.

Terrifying. Do you know, I just want to bring up to you. up the second wife very quickly, Florence Dougdale. So that was her name. She was an author herself, published author. And there was a, as you say, huge age gap. Apparently they got on really well, though, according to friends who also said that the first wife and Thomas didn't get on.

She wrote a biography of him. And he didn't burn it. It was called The Early Life. Is that because he dies? No, it's because it turns out he actually wrote it mostly himself. Oh, no. And it was published under her name. Oh my God.

That's the sort of thing you do if your first wife released a book saying your piece of shit. He suddenly go, hmm, how can I protect my reputation here? Isn't that astonishing? And has that survived? Yeah, yeah. Because a lot of stuff didn't. A lot of his correspondence was burned almost immediately after his death, which has really vexed a lot of biographers, obviously.

Yeah, right. So much burning of books went on back in the day, didn't it? Like, they were constantly burning books. So he burned most of his own diaries, I think, as well as burning his wife's diaries. She burned, like his second wife burned the courtship letters between him and his first. Everyone was burning letters and books left right and centre.

Why don't we do this anymore? I do. I've so far as so many laptops. It's a nightmare. All of your wife's diaries. There you were criticizing my carbon book, Brinnell in every book he's ever read. Paul Berers, obviously,

a celebrity poor bearer is very cool. Oh, yeah. There's a modern version of it, I'd say, of having lots of, well, not famous people being Paul Berers, but like something cool to do, which is Tupac. You know this about Tupac? If Tupac's dead, then Tupac's gang members smoked his ashes. Oh. No way. Yeah.

As was requested in a Tupac lyric, he said in the lyric, when I smoked my ashes, basically, in slightly different words that I won't use. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a question. Yeah. How can you smoke them if they're already ashes? Well, exactly. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Like, he wasn't made of tobacco. Well, I did say smoke his remains, but I'm doubting there's like an arm. That's a big cigarette. You need a very big briar pipe to get an arm into, wouldn't you? No, it was ashes. I don't know. I guess they're just... You just be in with...

Mix it in with... Mix it in. Yeah, yeah. And other things, I arise. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it was nice. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the UK literally have fashion police.

quite literally. Speaks a guy who's just been arrested for that choice of hoodie. So it turns out that one of the things, there's a lot of things that happen within police work with forensics, and a very important bit of it is trying to identify when a body might, you know, if you find a body, how long has it been there, diagnosing all that stuff. And one of the things that might help you with that is the clothing that the person is wearing.

And so there's this fashion historian called Amber Bashar, And she basically goes around. And she worked for Beyond Retro and she was a fashion historian. She liked to find where products were coming from, at what point they were using certain materials and so on. And there was a police forensic investigator who saw what she was doing after hearing her on a Radio 4 show and thought, I wonder if that's going to be interesting for me in terms of trying to diagnose how all the body is or just give us a bit more detail.

So that's what she does. She goes around for the UK police. She'll go to a murder scene and she'll look at the exact fabric. that they're wearing. And obviously, as we know, like, you know, if you were gonna die today, you might be wearing old clothes from- I was gonna say,

and me and Andy gonna look like we're from the 50s because we just have never bought new clothes for ourselves. Exactly. Yeah, that's the issue, right? But I suppose it just plays into a bigger picture of what they're doing. So there's one story which is a bit upsetting, but an old lady passed away

and they found a body that was wrapped up in a bra and she was able to look at the bra and work out exactly when the bra was from to be able to say, so it must have been this year that the body was in there. And she does it, by the way, there's a lot of amazing archives of clothing. And one big one is M&S have a massive archive of clothing that she can look through and find the history of items because a lot of Brits are going to be, you know, dying in M&S clothing. Sorry.

I hope to. I hope two one day. Actually, I don't mind when the day comes as long as I'm in my trusty MN. That's what people say, isn't it? Yeah, it's like people often, you know, how they want to die, they often say, in my sleep or in my MNS cagool. Either's fine with me. Yeah, and we should add that this is also not a sponsor that we're doing right now. Yeah.

I reckon there's certain items of clothing where I could tell you when that person dies. Oh, yeah. Buried in a Von Dutch cap. I'm going 2001. Straight away. Lipsstrong band. Come on. You get in a five-year period.

Yeah, okay. What about the cycles of fashion, though, every 30 years? It could always either be like, you know, it was last year or 31 years ago. So it has to be something that hasn't yet come back. Okay. Yes. Right. It's not retro.

Like, white guy. dead in a Wutang 36 chambers top 97-98. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, well, I've always worn Flares sometimes. That would have confused the hell out of police. At other times it's perfectly acceptable. I don't know what phase we're at now. Are we in a Flares phase? Yeah, we are actually.

We are. Oh, there we go. I think often she just goes, well, what we have here is a time traveler. I recruited a bit of help about this. I wrote to an expert. Val McDermott, the author, aka Queen of Crime. Holy shit, that's a clang. We thought the old curling team was a clang.

Unnamed curling team No I just Noah very slightly And I just asked her about this kind of stuff She's written a book as well as all her novels She's written a book about forensics And she said that natural fabrics decay when you're buried As in buried in the woods

You know that kind of thing if you've been killed But labels are usually manmade fibres So they survive Right so they can provide a clue If it's foreign label or a design label or whatever So she says if you're planning a murder Go for mass-produced cotton and snip those labels when it comes to dressing your corpse.

Good to know. It's very helpful. Right. Thank you, Val. That's good because you can tell how big the person was, even if the whole body's disintegrated, right? You can still be like, size eight. Mm.

Mm. Size 14. This does feel like this story feels most like, you know, Netflix are on the phone buying the rights to this series, surely, of like the person who solves crimes based on what you're wearing. Yeah. Sorry, I thought you meant buying rights to this podcast, which is so far. They are available.

Nothing. And she's cool. Amber, if you see a photo of her, she dresses like she's like someone from Beyond Retro Wood, right? Like she's got like old school clothing. She looks like she could be in a sort of Agatha Christie. She'd be a vintage detective. What could we call it? What, the series? Yeah, series called... Drop dead gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous.

Yes. Dress to kill. Brilliant. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. All right, we've got two films. Have you heard about this thing of the principle of interchange or principle of transference? So one of the fathers of forensics was a Frenchman called Emin Leocard in Leon

And his basic theory is that any two objects interacting Will leave a trace So when you commit a crime You will leave something behind that wasn't there before Like a bullet in a person And you will take away something that was there originally Right? So that's just like the founding principles

All you have to do is work hard to find those Well, you'll take away like a bit of dust or something Exactly yeah or a fibre on your shirt No a souvenir necessarily Always cut off the finger. But this, now we are so good that that sometimes makes things difficult for forensics people. So, for example, if I hug Reese and then I am murdered, Reese will have my DNA.

Sorry, my body's tested. It'll have DNA from Reese's clothes on it. Yes. Despite the fact he had nothing to do with it. So that suddenly means that he might have to be questioned or involved or whatever it is. So that's the extent to which forensics is advanced these days. It's so good now. You can recreate so much stuff.

Yeah, so surely it's got to the point where it's so good. Now the list of suspects is way too big and makes this way harder. So it's defeated, it's sort of eating itself. It's sort of, yeah, like those detective closed room things and suddenly like there's 5,000 people called to the room. You're probably all wondering why I got you. Yeah, yeah. It's obviously they've got good methods to winnow it down.

Yeah, sure. And you'd probably be released without charge after a day or two, Rhys. I don't know, I'll give up a vibe. Yeah. I got those sort of eyes. I thought that, yeah. The motive's there. You spent two hours with him now.

we'd all understand. I would be caught. I've read about how cat hair is one of the main things, right? Like murderers who have cats, getting caught quite quickly because if anyone, if anyone who've got a cat, you know, that you basically constantly have cat hair on you. And so everywhere you go,

you're just, you're molting like a cat and cat hair is coming off. And I have a ginger cat, so, you know, that's just the most visible one, basically. But do police now go around, if someone's murdered, are they now going around everyone's house testing not only other people in the house,

but they're cats as well? You'll get an knock on the door, say. Maybe, maybe that's a double match. You've got you and your cat. Right. We're looking for a British short hair. Great fur, yeah. Do you know you can catch people by different prints that aren't fingerprints,

various other prints. So, tongue prints, I think you could, because that's individual, although I'm not sure how many people lick the murder scene before leaving. Oh, you said tongue. I thought I heard time, which time prints would be as well. Time prints. Time print. Do you leave a time print?

Yeah, if you're, if you're, if you, um, your mobile phone leaves a signal. Oh, yeah, of course. That's a lot of modern detective. Is that a time print? Did he leave a time print? Well, I thought that's what reset and I was just trying to help. It's cool.

I like sound of... And if you punch in and out, like you would at a work factory for every murder, you've left a sort of a timestamp of, you know, no, so they have to check into a building, fire records. There's the comments book on the way out. Died lovely. Really easy to kill. He liked the two-star reviews.

It's terrible. That's a real crime. Crime against this lovely hotel. None of this is what I said. Prince. Prince. Glove prints. Wow. What?

That's the whole point of glove. Yeah, that's pretty. In this context. I know, right? First of all, you hugged Andy on the way in and you're wearing gloves. None of it's going to work, Reese. So, yeah, people can take glove prints. And because people think what you guys think, which is that they're wearing gloves, I'm safe,

they leave a lot more. They're much more cavalier than the arm with fingerprints. But now there are various police forces that have made databases of glove prints. So if they can match it to another glove print found at a different place, then they'll know that it's the same person. Just fibres that come off the gloves? Yeah, from the fibres that come off the glove and the pattern that the glove makes on, you know, it'll make an imprint. God, so clever. And it's even like it doesn't matter if it's the same brand of glove that I'm wearing compared to you, Andy,

because I'll be doing different things with my glove to what you're doing with your glove. And so it'll wear in a different way. Stop it. It's nuts. It's absolutely. that's what can be done. Earprints. Someone was caught in France by their earprints

because they'd been listening up against the keyholes of lots of student halls doors. Oh my God. That's incredible. That's amazing. Yeah. Footprint or shoe prints, I imagine, as well, would be a thing. You would see a size 12 adidas.

You might have sort of muds and stuff that you can... Yeah. But ear print, that's like, yeah, eyebrow print or... That's so neat. Can we say you can get a bum print? What do you mean? Get a butt? What, if you photocry...

Sit on the photocopier. You have a bump print. I just wonder, I mean, I just wonder if that's ever been used. Sorry. You mean if you're the murderer to put their bare ass on something at the scene, they could go, oh, you know whose bomb that is? It's a classic calling card. The police line up for those.

Yeah, turn around. Can bum number two move around here, please? Have you? this is a very cool thing. Have you had a forensic ecology? Forensic ecology. This is I read an interview with a woman called Rosie Everett. She uses materials found in the natural world to solve crimes, right? So specifically micro fossils.

There are these things called diatoms. We've spoken about them, I think ages ago. Basically, they're microscopic single cell algae and she can use these, the presence of these, to come up with a profile of the soil in an area which can then solve a crime. So there was, there's a castle in Cheshire called Beast and Castle, right, which is a protected area.

And there were some metal detectorists, night hawks, dirt sharks, who'd gone and nicked an arrow, like bronze age artefacts from the soil around there. And when they're caught, they just say, oh, we found them somewhere else. Can't prove anything. You know, except for Rosie Everett, who came up with a profile of the soil

based on the microscopic algae found there and proved that's the soil they've been taken from. Wow. Looked at the objects and went, hey, this soil's the same. Yeah, there was a bit of soil found on the Bronze Age artifacts. They'd nick from there and there was a bit of soil around the castle. Like, just so... Wasn't one of the ways they caught Ian Huntley from nettle disturbance?

Really? So nettles, he trampled nettles that meant that they were now growing outwards in a way they don't naturally that sort of proved that he was there in the woods at that time or something. Well, so it's next generation nettles still affected by the previous... Yeah, yeah, months later they had grown in a certain, like, because they would have been... Oh my God. Instead of up.

or something like that, that it was like, yeah. That's incredible. That's mad. And slightly less, just quickly tell you, a slightly less technologically advanced one of this guy I read about who got caught doing a crime after he got the crime scene very, in a lot of detail,

tattooed on his chest. So he literally, it was like, he'd like murdered someone outside a liquor store or something as if he got the liquor store, like a painting on his chest, with him doing the murder. And above it, it says the name of his gang, which was Rivera. It said Rivera kills above it.

And it was like a revenge killing. And he had that on his chest. And one day the police were just like flicking through a book of gang tattoos apparently. And they were like, wait, that's that liquor store. We've been trying to figure out where that guy, who killed that guy? That's that guy killing that guy.

And then he was just tried. That's brilliant. We've spoken about in the past how the yakuza would be busted because they all have very individualistic tattoos. And if they're on the run, they might show up on Instagram, sort of like, you know,

topless. Yeah. I mean, if you follow the accounts I do. And they'll be like, hey, that's him, that's the guy. Like tattoo spotting is a big way of busting criminals. Did you say your one, Andy, happened in Beeston? Yeah.

Well, that was, when we did our first book of the year, there was a crime there committed, which was thousands of bees were stolen from Beeston. I wonder if she can solve that crime now using this new technology. Wow. I just, I'd sort of forgotten that, but as soon as you said, we'd had it in our book, I thought, it'll have been a story about bees, won't it?

That's the level we operate at. We put it on the back. It's our bird. That was our leading fact. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that parents of newborn penguins take thousands of naps per day. Lazy. Slaxers.

Lazy. Yeah. To be fair to them, they're taking very short naps. These are chint-strapped penguins, so they live in the Antarctic and around the South Pacific, and there were scientists studying them recently on King George Island and they found that they nap over 10,000 times a day but they only nap for about four seconds at a time on average. But still it gets them something.

And they managed to tot up 11 hours of sleep a day. That's insane. Amazing. It's basically blinking. Basically every time they blink they do it four seconds and fall of... Yeah. It's like when you fall asleep at the cinema or the theatre. You know?

and you have that kind of yeah I've never left one of those occasions feeling noticeably rested despite doing that kind of semi-sleep but I wonder if you had a thousand of them yeah true yeah you just haven't been to a long enough play

you know how you get those sort of rise and grind influences these days all about you know getting up at 5am doing a gratitude journal you've got a like circadian rhythm and all that sort of stuff you know you gotta get sunlight before coffee and all this I mean do you think if they read this pretty soon everyone be like

No, no, no, no, don't go to bed. Just stand there. And then four seconds at a time. You just feel perfect. You'd say you're never asleep. Rejuvenated. Hustle never sleeps. It'll become a thing.

And so, yeah, and they go into deep sleep, which I'm not sure we're very good at doing within four seconds. But they looked at their brain waves. Really? Yeah. So it was quite difficult. It's like a bungee jump into sleep and then back. Yeah. It just feels so rapid to get that.

Yeah. Deep sleep. But yeah, they go into slow wave. sleep. They really rigged them up these penguins. It's amazing they could sleep at all. There was this researcher Wong Young Lee who I think was leading the research. You said it was exhausting for them because they had to catch 14 penguins and they had to get equipment on their brains to measure their brain activity and then they had to get accelerometers to see how fast their muscle movements, see how fast their muscles are moving and their positions and then they film like whether their heads start nodding and then coming again. So is it possible that the penguins actually

sleep completely normally but when they're manipulative, by scientists, they can't see at all. I think so. They did say, this is probably serving the purpose of meaning that they can guard their young. So it's when they guard their newborn children because one parent will be off getting food,

the other parent has to look after the kid. So it's like, you never sleep for so long that the kid can get in trouble. It's like having a baby monitor. And they said it's probably because of that, but it could also be because, you know, penguins, when they're looking after their young,

they hang out in these massive groups of just thousands of them. and it's really loud and busy. These researchers said we couldn't sleep because it was just so hectic there because so many penguins... These researchers are complaining a lot about their own sleep.

I have to say, for someone else's studying about something else. Four seconds, I wish. But they said it could just be that the penguins can't sleep for longer than that. They might be able to sleep for eight hours in a row, but it's just so that being woken up every four seconds because it's so noisy and bustling.

Wow, right. It is crazy. There are lots of animals in the... in the world that do when they've had a baby are forced into a position of just being awake like dolphins for example are awake for like a month a full month they just can't go to sleep because they're because their baby dolphins can't sleep so they're just awake the whole time so they're just following yeah for a month and they basically they they just have to be awake and with them part of the dolphin not being asleep as a baby is as they keep movement they're building up blubber they're building up

all the things that they need to make them into a bigger dolphin that's like and then then after like a they all start sleeping again. But the mum is just solidly awake. But don't they do the half of their brains at a time thing? So I'm not sure that that's what I tried to find out, but I couldn't find anything that said they go to half asleep. Because yes, dolphins shut half their brain asleep. Yeah.

As far as I could see, that wasn't part of any of the... I don't believe at all. Not either half. Yeah. Blimey. But you know. I don't know about all bears, but don't polar bears do a similar thing where they basically just attach the children to them for the whole time.

So the children don't really walk around following them. Like you see like elephants, you see them following and stuff like that. But polar bears is just like, you see a picture of a new mum in the polar bear community. There's just kids just like strapped. Do they have more kind of slinging on? I think they, yeah, I don't think they have papoose.

But they're just like grabbing hold of them. They just have to walk around with that and then just do everything from there. That's so great. So they just don't walk. Like tassels? Just got a lot of baby tassels. You know, elephant seals.

Yes, which is a huge great. massive big things. We got Santa Factor actually by Victoria Piedardi, so thank you for that Victoria, which is that sleeping elephant seals, they fall through the sea as they nap. So they are mammals. They do not have gills.

They can last up to about half an hour underwater, but sometimes they will just nap. And it seems like they just spiral downwards through the water asleep. Sounds absolutely terrific. It happens in my brain quite a lot when I'm trying to get to sleep. You jolt awake because you felt like you were falling. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, imagine if you woke up and you had actually dropped to the bottom of the sea. Because it is fast. They drop 400 meters in 10 minutes, which if you can, that's like we're talking the highest buildings in the world. That's like the full height of them almost. Yeah. And it takes quite a long time.

You know if you go to one of those skyscrapers? The lift takes about that long. Yeah. Yeah. So they're going that fast and fast. If you wake up when you've only got three minutes of oxygen left, that's presumably quite stressful. I would have thought so, yeah.

What's the protocol? What do they do? You can't really do that dad thing of faking that you weren't asleep on the sofa during a Sunday afternoon movie. You know, dads will always be like, I wasn't asleep. I'm marching. You're resting my eyes.

Dad, you're at the bottom of the ocean. Has anyone, have you ever met a penguin? Because I've got another clank. There we go. Which of your winter sports were you taking part in with the Olympic team? Well, I did do the skeleton, which is basically how penguins travel. Oh, yes. Did you?

They go, you know, it's like the head first one. Yeah, yeah. That looked terrifying. Well, I did it. They train on just on a track. So just on wheels on track rather than on ice. Right. And this is the context where, so there were penguins.

No, I did be penguins actually. Oh, this is just a bracketed anecdotes. I did, um, yeah, yeah, because you mentioned the Winter Olympics and that was penguin. Jason. I met a penguin in Australia, actually. Okay, right. And I'm, I can't. I was a child.

There are photos of it. But I'm trying to get my head around what it was, because from memory it was like, in our hotel. like where the various pools were there was different pools but it was presented in a sort of like go over to this section it was like a quite kid friendly hotel

was like this section is meant to be the Arctic or whatever and then in between two of these pools and the walkway were just like this bit where these penguins were and they would do like feedings

at a certain time every day and you could go and hang out and then I was a penguin's my favorite animal I was obsessed with penguins as a kid penguin is actually one of the many nicknames I tried to start for myself as a child as a child

You were 23, weren't you? That's a child in some communities. And then, like, I got picked as the volunteer for this sort of penguin feeding. And so I was, like, doing the whole, you know, I was chucking the fish. Wow, that's great. Shook his fin. Shook his penguin fin. What do they have?

Wing. Wing, yeah, wing. Fook his wing, fin. Shook his wing, yeah. Huck his wing, yeah. That's lovely. That's very cool. And now your DNA is on that penguin.

And if it's murder. penguin goes missing. I'm absolutely fucked. But my cat's also a suspect because there's definitely cat hair on that penguin now. Have you seen the penguins at the zoo, London Zoo? No.

Oh, well, I recommend. Can you meet them? To us geographically. I don't think you can meet them as far as I'm aware. There was something about them, wasn't there? There was something, isn't there, isn't their enclosure? It's the only grade two listed.

Oh, yes. It's got that amazing. We've talked about it before. I was in a Harry Starr's video. I think that rings about That enclosure That is grade two listed Because that spiral thing in the middle

Is where the as it was Video is filmed He's like stood on that thing And all these women are sort of circling Right Are they dressed as penguins? They weren't while they're in toxedo Oh

I wonder what they did with the penguins When they were filming that video I know right I think a lot of people On the internet were wandering that as well I mean supposedly it's just a time When they weren't using it How can they not be using

Their main home and enclosure The album is called Harry's house, so it does feel like you march it in and went, this is a Harry's house. Get out. Yeah. Something that sleeps quite weirdly, it is spiders. And they actually are unique in the animal world, I think, in that they don't have the right body clock. And with all, they're the only things we know about that don't have the right body clock. So you know we're all in basically 24 hour body clock, although sometimes when people go and live in caves, they sort of stretch to 25 hours or 23 or whatever.

but mostly So that we're such a dismissive role of the air like this is the thing that's personally inconvenient you on more than one occasion those cavemen are always late Anna's waiting outside the cave the table for two God's sake

Every time circadian rhythm my ass Yeah So mostly even bacteria operate on a 24 hour But spiders Don't And we don't really know why except that they're fucked up.

So they have the shortest body clocks ever known. Some spiders have been found to have 17-hour body clocks. But this should really mess with them. So spiders left their own devices. And these are specifically trash-line orb weavers, which sounds... Slam. I mean, roasted it a lot.

They're actually called that because they hide in their webs in a pile of crap. So they, like, will put dead bodies and feces and dirt in their web, and then they hide amongst it. Wow. It's not dissimilar to my room. and that's how you catch flies. Anyway, they need to wake up at night

and get super super active in the dark and they spin their webs at night time and they erect this big pile of trash to live in and then in the daytime spiders fall asleep still which is why when you see them in daylight they're usually just motionless and then they go nuts at night in the dark but it turns out

if you subject a spider to full darkness it starts waking up and weaving its web many hours before night would actually fall so it wakes up on the 17 hour mark rather than on the 24 hour mark so that means they're constantly kind of jet lags right because they're they're constantly their bodies are going hey we've got to wake up now and then it's like no no no you've got to stay asleep because it's not night yet and then night comes and then they have to go to sleep and they're wide awake but they manage to just reset themselves every day do they get cranky

well maybe that's why they're such bastards and they're always eating each other and hanging out in the corner of the room deliberately scaring people oh I feel I feel for them? That sounds very rough. Doesn't it? But apparently you can't catch up on sleep anyway, right? So there's a myth, the whole idea of like, I only got six hours sleep last night, so I'm going to now have 10 hours sleep or whatever. It's a

myth. Is that a myth? You're better off just having seven or eight every time. So you're impossible to catch up on sleep. You'll always be a bit more tired in life. You'll just keep getting. Yeah, so I don't mean it's impossible to go, in this economy, it's bloody impossible to catch up on sleep. I just

mean that it actually makes it worse. So it's like it's not a Tally for the week where you're trying to get us It's like no just every day try and get seven or eight I did not know that I don't try and improve it with the way you put it Because the way to avoid being underslept is then just have seven or eight hours Rather than yeah yeah

Yeah yeah because I I assumed it was the other thing Me too That there's a ratchet and it only gets worse for your life Yeah exactly but it's not like there's a certain amount of hours You must sleep in your life And if you're not getting to the total Like you're filling it in like one of those thermometers And at school where you're trying to get donations

Well, you can actually trick yourself into thinking you've had more sleep, can't you? Remember we did that thing about the placebo sleep experiment that was done in America where they told people that they'd had more sleep than they actually had and they performed better in tasks? I always use this as a life act to try and tell myself every morning I've had loads of sleep if I haven't. Do you? It hasn't worked yet. Oh, right? You need someone else to tell you that in order for you to actually believe it, right?

Yeah. Because you know what if... But how can you ever do that? Because, you know, if you're employing someone to do that, you'd also know. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, if you're... your phone told you, I believe it.

Yeah, those apps, sleep apps should just lie. They should just lie. Everyone will get so much more done. Maybe they are lying. Because they wouldn't tell this, would they? Because that defeats the object. So perhaps that's what they're... I bet if you have it and you work for the app,

it always tells you that you've got a load of sleep. Yeah. So that you're more productive in the day. Everyone else, I think, do what you want. If they know from your phone that you work for a rival app, they're obviously going to say, sorry, mate, that was terrible. You're knackered. Oh, do you look awful.

Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media sites. I'm on Instagram on at Shreiberland. Andy? On Twitter, Andrew Hunter, Em? Penguin. And all the forums. And at Reese Jamesie on Instagram. Yep. Or if you want to get through to us as a group, where can they go, Anna? You can go to at no such thing on Twitter or you can email. at podcast at qi.com. Or you can go to our website, which is no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there as well as links to club fish and various other bits of merch. Do check it out.

Otherwise, just come back again next week and we'll be here with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.